Day-O-Maddie

This morning I had Miss Laura come over to watch Eli so Maddux and I could spend some one-on-one. When I did this last week for Eli, we ended up at the Kid's Museum. I'm finding it's a little more difficult to plan 'fun' things for Maddux at this age....she still prefers a short nap in the morning, and since she's not walking, strollers confine her when we go to a crowded place. I opted to run a few small errands and then take her to the park and the pool. My hope was that she'd nap in there somewhere.

I took Maddie to the park because when we normally go, she gets stuck in the stroller while we chase Eli around. I usually get her out once or twice to swing, but between moving around to follow Eli and all of the other (bigger) kids, she doesn't get to stretch her legs much. The park is a little less crowded before 10AM (and much cooler!!), so I let her crawl a bunch. Maddie got to swing for as long as she wanted too....that was a long time. She absolutely loved it and giggled constantly. I tried to take some pictures of her as she was swinging, but she was moving so quick that none of them turned out very well. After she exhausted herself on the swings we went to one of the structures so she could crawl/walk a little. This didn't last too long because she kept crawling down to the mulched area where the traffic was a bit more congested. I wanted to put her on the merry-go-round, but it was always at full capacity. Finally I stuck her back in the stroller (she was getting a little sleepy by now) and walked over to the picnic benches. I gave her a snack and started to snap a bunch of photos. She gave me a few lion faces, a few eye-battings (check out the lashes!!), and lots and lots of puckered-up-eating expressions.

After a short drive back to the neighborhood, during which time Maddux knocked out 15 minutes of snoozing, we changed and got in the pool. This is another area that Maddie doesn't usually get full attention on, so I took her for a 30-minute pool session with just the two of us. She had a good time, but around 25 minutes she got a little fussy due to hunger. No problem: I packed her up and drove her home so I could switch the kids out. Eli had just finished lunch, so I passed Mad Dog off to Miss Laura for lunch and Eli and I went to the pool. He doesn't get the one-on-one there with me either, so that worked out nicely. I didn't let him do the diving board this time (I had a hard time swimming him back to the side last time), but he jumped off the side about 42 times. Eli is wearing his turtle-back floatation device all the time now, and he's really swimming well with it. I think he's probably working too hard at it, so it is not an efficient use of his energy, but it gets the job done for now!